The arrest of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court was a victory for justice, Nobel laureate Maria Ressa said.
“There’s a sense that impunity ends and that the idea of an international rules-based order can perhaps still exist,” she said at an event in Berlin.
Mr Duterte was dramatically arrested at Manila airport on 11 March and flown to The Hague to face the ICC.
The international court is investigating alleged crimes against humanity during the former president’s war on drugs in his country, which left thousands of people dead, mostly poor Filipinos.
Ms Ressa drew parallels between the Philippines under Mr Duterte and the state of democracy in the West, particularly in the US. She warned that the forces that enabled Mr Duterte’s rise – social media manipulation and disinformation – were now fueling democratic backsliding in the West.
“I joke all the time that the Philippines went from hell to purgatory,” the Filipino-American journalist said. “My only worry is that the West and America is at the stage we were at in 2016, when you’re descending to hell. To watch this deja vu twice, it is like a bad punishment for me.”
Her comments came a few days after Mr Duterte’s first appearance before the ICC.
Ms Ressa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her fight for press freedom in the Philippines. She had co-founded and ran Rappler, an investigative website that exposed government corruption, disinformation campaigns and alleged extrajudicial killings during Mr Duterte’s war on drugs.
In spite of being harassed, arrested and slapped with multiple legal cases, Ms Ressa and Rappler continued to report on state-sponsored violence and the erosion of democracy in the country. The Duterte administration labelled her a threat, accusing her of spreading “fake news” and even linking her to an alleged coup plot.
Ms Ressa said the damage Mr Duterte’s brutal war on drugs had caused the Philippines should serve as a cautionary tale for other democracies.
“In 2016, when the drug war began, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is going to affect a generation of Filipinos.’ And it has,” Ms Ressa said. “So yes, he’s arrested but there’s so much damage that now needs to get rebuilt.”
“What we learned in the Philippines is that you are at your greatest power when the attacks begin,” she added. “If you are silent, you give consent. If you are silent, you give up your rights. This is that moment where you have to ask yourself, what are you willing to sacrifice for the truth? Because if you don’t, if you bury your head in the sand like an ostrich, you will lose your rights.”
